What a Tripp
Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky are in the news again. A year after the tawdry scandal that skewered the Clinton presidency, the two are doing their public penance--not by taking up a charitable cause, but in search of outer beauty--as in make-overs.
Tripp has undergone extensive plastic surgery. She told the National Enquirer that she had a nose job, chin tuck, neck reduction, facial peel and liposuction by West Hollywood plastic surgeon Geoffrey Keyes. Her goal, she told the tabloid, was to look good for her upcoming wiretap trial in Maryland. A photo of her new look is prominently posted on her Web site, https://www.lindatripp.com.
She also has shed 40 pounds, with 20 more to go. Lewinsky is undergoing a less dramatic change. She is a high-profile spokeswoman for the Jenny Craig weight-loss program as she slims down.
Both women--once friends, now enemies--have been vilified as much for their looks as for their indiscretions.
True, they acted in an ugly manner, but neither the media nor the public felt entitled to make fun of the looks of Bill Clinton, Kenneth Starr or Newt Gingrich. Jay Leno didn’t take to task the many comb-overs or rumpled shirts of the Republican House. Fashion magazines didn’t offer Starr lessons on starched shirts or more attractive eyeglasses.
Tripp reportedly was devastated that she was portrayed by hefty actor John Goodman. But Goodman, a respected movie and stage actor, does not seem to be ashamed that he is a large, overweight, middle-age man.
Making fun of Tripp’s and Lewinsky’s looks is, in part, society’s way of punishing them for breaking the taboos of adultery and betrayal, according to one area psychiatrist.
“In the era of chauvinism that we’re just beginning to come out of, men control all the power. They have the influence,” said Harold H. Bloomfield, Del Mar psychiatrist and author of many books on depression and “Making Peace With Your Past: The Six Essential Steps to Enjoying a Beautiful Life” (Harpers Collins), which is due for release in the spring.
“Men could be ugly beasts, but they have the resources,” Bloomfield said. “The only way that women could begin to control the resources was by being beautiful. That doesn’t excuse it. We have to transcend it.”
In this supposed era of girl power, Bloomfield said, high school girls are still getting that message: “You better look beautiful if you want to have a great life.”
The only women who have been able to transcend these superficial standards are what author Laura Fraser called “honorary men”--powerful older women like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.
“In this culture, image is so much more important than morality,” said Fraser, author of “Losing It: False Hope and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry” (Dutton Books, 1998).
“The irony of the whole situation is that both Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky were attractive enough for Bill Clinton,” she said.
Almost every woman touched by the Clinton scandals has had a public redo of some kind. Jones had her nose changed. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton went through a variety of hairstyles before settling into her current simple hairdo.
By tackling their personal appearances--especially their weight--so publicly, Tripp and Lewinsky are connecting with the public in an empathetic way. Think of Oprah Winfrey, one of the more powerful woman in America, who has endeared herself to TV viewers, partly with her public battles with weight loss.
Losing weight is a connective thread in American culture. Plumpness is almost a taboo in our country, in spite of the fact that more than half of American women wear a size 10 or larger.
“We equate being overweight with being immoral,” she said. “We immediately associate being overweight with greed, sensuality and just being too much. And so Monica Lewinsky was just too much. In this culture, a woman can’t be too much without being punished for it.”
And so the weight-loss plan is her most obvious path to redemption, as is Tripp’s plastic surgery, she said.
In the last 100 years, women have been pressured to be thin for many reasons, she said. First, as they rejected the ideal of the Victorian wife and mother, they rebelled against the ideal of the voluptuous woman. Second, modern aesthetics have also become streamlined on many levels, such as architecture, art and clothing. And last, plumpness used to be a sign of wealth, when few had enough to eat. But as food became more available, thinness became the status symbol of wealth.
“Some of the first huge diet crazes were actually during the Depression,” Fraser said. “If you were dieting during the Depression, you were really well off.”
In this era of women having more power, it seems ridiculous that now, more than ever, they are subjected to more stringent standards of attractiveness.
But that is precisely why pressures to conform to one ideal of beauty are becoming greater, Fraser said.
“It’s a way of keeping women in place. If you say that Hillary Clinton has piano legs, then that completely negates her brilliance, her leadership and all that.”
Things have to change, Bloomfield said.
As we enter the new millennium, he said, “There’s a real need to rethink what it means to be beautiful and to look beautiful.”
Barbara Thomas can be reached at barbara.thomas@latimes.com.
